The oil rig worker who reported seeing a plane on fire and falling from the sky at the location they originally lost comms has been fired. Originally dismissed as a hoax, his allegations are now being taken seriously. Hmmmmmmmm.

Meanwhile a large reward is now being offered for info leading to the location of the wreck. I bet nobody claims it.

Passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 flight most likely died from suffocation as the plane coasted into the ocean on autopilot, Australian officials have said.

In a new 55-page report, the Australian Transport Safety Board said investigators arrived at the conclusion after comparing conditions on the flight with previous disasters.
The news comes as authorities announced the Australian-led search will now focus on a 60,000 square kilometre area further south in the Indian Ocean.

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Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said it was 'highly, highly likely' flight MH370 was on autopilot

The report narrowed down the possible final resting place from thousands of possible routes, while noting the absence of communications, the steady flight path and a number of other key abnormalities in the course of the ill-fated flight.
'Given these observations, the final stages of the unresponsive crew/hypoxia event type appeared to best fit the available evidence for the final period of MH370's flight when it was heading in a generally southerly direction,' the ATSB report said.
Officials said this suggested the plane was most likely to have crashed further south than previously thought.

They said they are confident the Boeing 777, carrying 239 people, was set to autopilot several hours before its demise into desolate and unmapped waters.
Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said: 'It is highly, highly likely that the aircraft was on autopilot otherwise it could not have followed the orderly path that has been identified through the satellite sightings.'
The new analysis comes more than 100 days after the plane disappeared on March 8 shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing.

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Mr Truss said the new phase of the search could take more than a year and involves mapping 23,000 square miles of ocean, while the previous search area was only 330 square miles

Investigators say what little evidence they have to work with suggests the plane was deliberately diverted thousands of kilometres from its scheduled route before eventually plunging into the Indian Ocean.

The search was narrowed in April after a series of acoustic pings thought to be from the plane's black box recorders were heard along a final arc where analysis of satellite data put its last location.
But a month later, officials conceded the wreckage was not in that concentrated area, some 1,600 km (1,000 miles) off the northwest coast of Australia, and the search area would have to be expanded.
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The new analysis comes days after Malaysian police said pilot Zaharie Shah, 53 (pic), is the main suspect in the disappearance

'The new priority area is still focused on the seventh arc, where the aircraft last communicated with satellite. We are now shifting our attention to an area further south along the arc,' MrTruss told reporters in Canberra.
Truss said the area was determined after a review of satellite data, early radar information and aircraft performance limits after the plane diverted across the Malaysian peninsula and headed south into one of the remotest areas of the planet.
The next phase of the search is expected to start in August and take a year, covering some 60,000 sq km at a cost of A$60 million ($56 million) or more. The search is already the most expensive in aviation history.
The new priority search area is around 2,000km west of Perth, a stretch of isolated ocean frequently lashed by storm force winds and massive swells.
Two vessels, one Chinese and one from Dutch engineering company Fugro, are currently mapping the sea floor along the arc, where depths exceed 5,000 metres in parts.
A tender to find a commercial operator to conduct the sea floor search closes on Monday
The new search area has been the subject of an aerial search previously, but efforts will now head below the waves, combing the ocean floor which is some 5km deep in parts.
The shift was expected as the head of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Martin Dolan, said last week it would move south.

'This site is a most likely place where the aircraft is resting,' he said. 'The search is going to be painstaking – of course we could be fortunate and find it in the first hour or the first day, but it could 12 months.'
Mr Truss said Australia remained dedicated to the task of solving 'this greatest aviation mystery in total history.'
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Malaysia airlines flight MH370 vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8 with 239 passengers and crew aboard

The new analysis comes just days after Malaysian Airlines pilot Zaharie Shah, 53, was revealed to be the prime suspect behind the plane's disappearance.

Malaysian police made the announcement after discovering files on Shah's home flight simulator showing he practiced landing on small airfields, including several in the Indian Ocean.

The files had been deleted from the computer before officials seized it, but have since been recovered by detectives.

The criminal inquiry completed intelligence checks on all of the people on board the flight to Beijing via Kuala Lumpur, but the only individual arousing suspicion was Captain Zaharie.

The father-of-three was found to have no social or work-related future plans, unlike the rest of the crew including his co-pilot, Fariq Hamid.

The criminal inquiry, which is yet to rule out other reasons for the plane's disappearance including a mechanical failure and terrorism, has so far only released its results to foreign governments and their investigators.

Right, so they are going for the Pilot Suicide solution. Next they will "find" the wreckage but it will be too deep and inaccessible to retrieve. Cue solemn memorial service at sea with wreaths cast on the waters and we can call off the charade "search" that's cost over $100m so far and never admit what really happened.

MH370: New evidence of cockpit tampering as investigation into missing plane continuesInvestigations into the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have revealed apparent tampering of systems in the cockpit

Air crash investigators probing the disappearance ofMalaysiaAirlines MH-370 have discovered possible new evidence of tampering with the plane's cockpit equipment.

A report released by Australian air crash investigators has revealed that the missing Boeing 777 suffered a mysterious power outage during the early stages of its flight, which experts believe could be part of an attempt to avoid radar detection.

According to the report, the plane's satellite data unit made an unexpected "log-on" request to a satellite less than 90 minutes into its flight from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, to the Chinese city of Beijing. The reports says the log-on request - known as a "handshake" - appears likely to have been caused by an interruption of electrical power on board the plane.

"A log-on request in the middle of a flight is not common," said the report, by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. "An analysis was performed which determined that the characteristics and timing of the logon requests were best matched as resulting from power interruption."

David Gleave, an aviation safety expert from Loughborough University, said the interruption to the power supply appeared to be the result of someone in the cockpit attempting to minimise the use of the aircraft's systems. The action, he said, was consistent with an attempt to turn the plane's communications and other systems off in an attempt to avoid radar detection.

"A person could be messing around in the cockpit which would lead to a power interruption," he said. "It could be a deliberate act to switch off both engines for some time. By messing about within the cockpit you could switch off the power temporarily and switch it on again when you need the other systems to fly the aeroplane."

Inmarsat, the company that officially analysed flight data from MH370, has confirmed the assessment but says it does not know why the aircraft experienced a power failure.

"It does appear there was a power failure on those two occasions," Chris McLaughlin, from Inmarsat, told The Telegraph. "It is another little mystery. We cannot explain it. We don't know why. We just know it did it."

The Australian report released by Australian authorities has revealed that the Boeing 777 attempted to log on to Inmarsat satellites at 2.25am, three minutes after it was detected by Malaysian military radar.

This was as the plane was flying north of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The aircraft had already veered away from the course that would have taken it to its destination of Beijing, but had not yet made its turn south towards the Indian Ocean.

The aircraft experienced another such log-on request almost six hours later, though this was its seventh and final satellite handshake and is believed to have been caused by the plane running out of fuel and electrical power before apparently crashing, somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean. The other five handshakes were initiated by the satellite ground station and were not considered unusual.

Asked whether the power interruption could have been caused by a mechanical fault, Mr Gleave said: "There are credible mechanical failures that could cause it. But you would not then fly along for hundreds of miles and disappear in the Indian Ocean."

Another aviation expert, Peter Marosszeky, from the University of New South Wales, agreed, saying the power interruption must have been intended by someone on board. He said the interruption would not have caused an entire power failure but would have involved a "conscious" attempt to remove power from selected systems on the plane.

"It would have to be a deliberate act of turning power off on certain systems on the aeroplane," he said. "The aircraft has so many backup systems. Any form of power interruption is always backed up by another system.

"The person doing it would have to know what they are doing. It would have to be a deliberate act to hijack or sabotage the aircraft."

An international team in Malaysia investigating the cause of the crash has not yet released its findings formally, but has indicated it believes the plane was deliberately flown off course. The plane disappeared on March 8 with 239 passengers aboard but an international air, sea and underwater search has failed to find any wreckage.

The Australian report added that the plane appeared to have flown on autopilot across the Indian Ocean and that the crew and passengers were likely to have been unresponsive due to lack of oxygen during the southward flight.

It has recommended an underwater search in an area about 1,100 miles west of Australia, around the location where the plane's seventh "handshake" is believed to have occurred.

The report also notes that the plane's in-flight entertainment system delivered a satellite message 90 seconds after the first power failure but not after the second failure hours later. This, it says, "could indicate a complete loss of generated electrical power shortly after the seventh handshake".

The new underwater search will begin in August and cover about 23,000 square miles. It is expected to take up to a year.

More smoke and mirrors. If he was suicidal why not just crash into the nearest mountain instead of flying thousands of km's off course until they ran out of fuel.

Maybe he wanted to make sure that it was never found (or found too late) so that it could never be proven. With a family, there's a good chance he had life insurance, and it might have had a suicide clause in it. I'm not sure when he and the passengers will be declared dead for legal purposes though.

Passengers on flight MH370 died of oxygen starvation hours before the pilot performed a controlled ditching in the Indian Ocean, according to a new study into the disaster.

Analysis by a veteran air accident investigator suggests that all 239 people lost consciousness up to four hours before the Boeing 777 disappeared beneath the waves.

The most likely scenario is that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah deliberately depressurised the cabin, thereby depriving those on board of air, the research concludes.

Theory: Geoff Taylor (left) and Ewan Wilson who have written a book which claims the pilot of MH370 cut off the oxygen supply to the passengers before deliberately crashing into the Indian Ocean

Although oxygen masks would have dropped down automatically from above the seats, their supply was limited to just 20 minutes.

Those unable to grab a mask, including sleeping passengers, would have passed out within the space of a few minutes.

The entire 'ghost plane' - including her cabin crew whose air supply is only marginally longer, would have slipped into a coma and died shortly after from oxygen starvation.

Ahmad Shah, who locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit, survived long enough - either by repressurising the aircraft or from breathing his own, more extensive air supply - to evade radar and 'execute his master plan', researchers have concluded.
He then performed a controlled ditching in the sea, which would explain why no debris has been found because the plane landed and sank in one piece.

'Mentally ill': The book claims the most likely scenario is that pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah (above) deliberately depressurised the cabin then flew for another three hours before ditching into the sea

The theory is the result of the first independent study into March's disaster by the New Zealand-based air accident investigator, Ewan Wilson.

Wilson, the founder of Kiwi Airlines and a commercial pilot himself, arrived at the shocking conclusion after considering 'every conceivable alternative scenario'.

However, he has not been able to provide any conclusive evidence to support his theory.

An earlier report from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) also concluded that passengers may have died from hypoxia.

And Malaysian authorities previously named Ahmad Shah as their prime suspect.

The remarkable claims are made in the book 'Goodnight Malaysian 370', the culmination of a four-month study into the incident, which Wilson co-wrote with the New Zealand broadsheet journalist, Geoff Taylor.

Wilson, a qualified transport safety investigator, said: 'One of our objectives in writing this book was, in some small way, to convey the human stories of the tragedy.

'Our other, more important task was to pursue the truth about what really happened; that is one small contribution we felt we could make to this whole, terrible affair.

'We could never have foreseen the information we uncovered, or their implications.

'Neither could we have imagined the horrific scenario that our research suggests took place on board that fateful plane.'

Wilson and Taylor's entire scenario makes for difficult reading.

They believe that Ahmad Shah, who they have concluded was suffering from mental illness, tricked his co-pilot Fariq Hamid into taking a break about 40 minutes after take-off.

After locking Hamid out of the cockpit, Ahmad Shah made his last broadcast to air traffic control - 'Goodnight, Malaysian 370' - before switching off the aircraft's air-to-ground communication links.

Alone at the controls, he took MH370 up to 39,000 feet and de-pressurised the aircraft, giving passengers and crew less than 60 seconds of Time of Useful Consciousness (TUC).

Search continues: Officials claim they are 'making progress' as they continue to scour 60,000 sq km of sea for the plane. The orange line indicates 'high priority' search areas; the yellow has been searched already

Ahmad Shah could not have prevented the plane's oxygen masks from automatically dropping down or an automated emergency announcement in English.

But Flight 370 was a night flight and, with the cabin lights off, the majority of passengers would have been asleep, or close to it.

And for 227 of the 239 passengers, English was not their first language.
Cabin crew would have tried to help those on board, but would have had to have donned their own facemasks first.

'It would have been a frightening and confusing time throughout the cabin,' Taylor said.

'By the time some of the passengers had woken up groggy, heard the commotion and looked around in confusion, it would have been too late for them.

'Those passengers who did not react within 60 seconds or less would have lapsed into unconsciousness and death would have followed within four to six minutes.'

International effort: Australia's deputy prime minister Warren Truss unveiled the latest search plan at a press conference in Canberra earlier this month. The government has contracted a new firm to take up the search

Those who had found a mask would have had between 12 and 22 minutes of breathing time before blacking out.

The cabin crew's oxygen supply would have lasted for about 70 minutes, depending upon the height of the aircraft.

By the time MH370 returned to cruising altitude, everyone on board would have perished.

Ahmad Shah would have had three hours' worth of oxygen - plenty enough, the authors believe, to carry out the 'final act of his performance'.

They conclude that he set a course for the southern Indian Ocean and, after the fuel ran dry, glided the aircraft for a further 100 nautical miles before performing a controlled ditching on the surface of the water.
Wilson, a trained commercial pilot, said: 'Ahmad Shah was a man known for his methodical, thorough nature, for his love of the technical, and probably for his ego, too.

'This would have been his final sad act to his family and to the world: "find this one".'

Absolutely not. There is no new information. Two guys just wrote a book.
That being said, suicide has always been my theory also. (with a tendency to being talked into the "shot down" theory) I just don't like these guys releasing this as "fact" just to make money on their book.
If it is true, I hope the pilot survived the ditching and had a long time to think about what he did in the south Pacific before being eaten by sharks.